This invention relates to systems and methods for enabling a telephone craft technician to access telephone network dial tone, and thereby place a telephone call, without leaving the technician's service vehicle.
In the telephone industry, installation and repair personnel referred to as craft technicians must be in the field traveling from site to site where installations and repairs are to be made. Requests for such services are typically collected at a central location and then dispatched to different technicians for attention. Once a problem has been attended to, the craft technician reports results back to the central location.
The computerization of this dispatching and reporting process has enabled craft technicians to receive dispatches and submit reports without having to travel to and from or verbally communicate with the central maintenance location. For example, a craft technician can now communicate with the central location through hand-held portable field terminals such as are disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,837,811 to Butler et al. and U.S. Pat. No. 5,377,259 to Butler et al. and available from Communications Manufacturing Company (CMC) of Los Angeles, Calif. This computerization of the telephone network maintenance system and the advent of the technician's field terminal have significantly improved the efficiency of the maintenance system.
To communicate with the maintenance system (or any other telephone number desired to be called) through one of the aforementioned field terminals, the craft technician makes a wire connection between the terminal and a conventional, or POTS (Plain Old Telephone Service), telephone line. For example, the technician can plug a modular telephone cable into a jack of the field terminal and into a jack at a subscriber's premises. As another example, the wired connection can be made at a crossconnect box typically located in a residential or commercial neighborhood to provide connecting terminals between the respective central office of the telephone network and the subscribers in the neighborhood. Such a wired connection to the field terminal requires that the craft technician leave his or her vehicle, which is undesirable if the weather is inclement. In some instances, leaving the service vehicle can compromise the technician's safety. Such a wired connection can also result in customer complaints because the technician's connection may be to a subscriber's line. If this occurs and the subscriber attempts to use the line while the technician is accessing it, the line will appear to be not working and thus result in a complaint.
In view of these disadvantages which can arise if a wired connection to the field terminal is required, there is the need for another means for interconnecting the field terminal with the telephone network. One way to satisfy this need is to transmit communications with the field terminal through a cellular phone. It is known that computers can transmit and receive data through cellular phones or other wireless services (e.g., Motorola's ARDIS and Bellsouth/G.E.-Ericson's RAM), and this can be readily done with the aforementioned field terminals from CMC. A disadvantage of this technique, however, is that communications through such a system require payment of a toll for using the system.
In view of the foregoing, there is the continuing need for an improved system and method by which a telephone craft technician can access telephone network dial tone to make a call without having to leave the technician's service vehicle, without affecting customer service or causing customer complaints, and without incurring toll charges for wireless communications.